This document presents an interview with Julia Powles, a legal researcher at the University of Cambridge, conducted by InternetLab in August 2016 during her visit to Brazil for the VII Seminar on Privacy and Personal Data. The interview explores the complexities of the "right to be forgotten" (RTBF), focusing primarily on the European Union's implementation following the landmark Costeja vs. Google Spain case. Powles discusses the tensions between freedom of expression, personality rights, and data protection, while examining how this right has been interpreted and applied across different jurisdictions. The conversation addresses critical issues including the scope of de-indexation, jurisdictional challenges, the role of private companies in decision-making, and the specific context of Brazil, where courts were considering RTBF cases involving television broadcasts of old crimes. Throughout the interview, Powles emphasizes that the RTBF is primarily intended for ordinary people seeking to move on from past events that no longer hold public interest, rather than for public figures or matters of ongoing public concern. The document serves as both a theoretical exploration and practical analysis of one of the most contentious issues at the intersection of digital rights, privacy, and free expression.
Summary: The opening pages present the title and basic information about the document: "Right to Be Forgotten: Between Freedom of Expression and Personality Rights - Interview with Julia Powles." These pages establish the bilingual nature of the publication (Portuguese and English) and provide Creative Commons licensing information (CC BY 3.0 BR), which allows others to remix, adapt, and create derivative works, including for commercial purposes, as long as proper attribution is given. The document is dated January 2017 and published by InternetLab in São Paulo.
Interpretation: The choice of a Creative Commons license reflects InternetLab's commitment to open access and the free circulation of knowledge about digital rights. The bilingual format demonstrates an intention to reach both Brazilian and international audiences, positioning this conversation within a global dialogue about the right to be forgotten. This accessibility approach is particularly significant for a topic that crosses national boundaries and requires cross-jurisdictional understanding.
Summary: These pages outline the institutional team behind the publication and provide background on the publication structure. The InternetLab team includes Directors Dennys Antonialli, Francisco Brito Cruz, and Mariana Giorgetti Valente, with project leadership by Jacqueline Abreu, Dennys Antonialli, and Francisco Brito Cruz. Researchers Beatriz Kira and Juliana Pacetta Ruiz, along with research intern Ana Luiza Araujo, contributed to the project. The table of contents reveals six main sections covering various aspects of the right to be forgotten, from its functionality to implementation risks.
Interpretation: The collaborative nature of this project, involving multiple researchers and institutional support, underscores the complexity of the right to be forgotten as a research topic. The interdisciplinary team composition suggests that addressing digital rights requires diverse expertise spanning law, technology, and policy. The structured approach to the interview, divided into thematic sections, indicates a deliberate effort to comprehensively cover the multifaceted dimensions of this controversial right.
Summary: Julia Powles is introduced as a legal researcher at the University of Cambridge with appointments in both the Faculty of Law and the Computer Laboratory. Her expertise spans data protection, privacy, intellectual property, internet governance, and regulation. Prior to her academic position, she worked as a contributing editor at The Guardian and as a speechwriter for the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization. The interviewers, Francisco Carvalho de Brito Cruz and Jacqueline de Souza Abreu, are both established scholars with backgrounds in law and technology, holding positions at the University of São Paulo and having international research experience.
Interpretation: The credentials of both the interviewee and interviewers establish the high level of expertise and international perspective brought to this conversation. Powles's combination of academic research, journalism, and policy work positions her uniquely to bridge theoretical and practical dimensions of the right to be forgotten. The interviewers' backgrounds in Brazilian law and international study create an ideal dynamic for exploring how European developments in digital rights might translate to the Brazilian context, considering local legal traditions and social concerns.
Summary: Additional team members who contributed to the project are presented, including Dennys Antonialli (PhD candidate with experience at Stanford and the ACLU), Beatriz Kira (Master's student with international exchange experience), Juliana Pacetta Ruiz (with background in human rights law and international public management), and Ana Luiza Araujo (undergraduate student responsible for translations). Each team member brings specific expertise and international exposure, particularly from German and American institutions, reflecting the global nature of digital rights discourse.
Interpretation: The diverse educational and professional backgrounds of the project team reflect InternetLab's commitment to bringing international best practices and comparative perspectives to Brazilian digital rights debates. The inclusion of researchers at different career stages—from undergraduate interns to PhD candidates and established directors—suggests an institutional commitment to knowledge transfer and capacity building in the emerging field of internet law and policy. This multi-generational approach ensures both depth of expertise and fresh perspectives on evolving digital challenges.
Summary: The introduction contextualizes the interview within Brazil's growing engagement with right to be forgotten issues. It explains that the interview was conducted during Powles's visit for the VII Seminar on Privacy and Personal Data in August 2016. The introduction highlights that debates about the right to be forgotten have intensified globally since the 2014 Costeja decision, with Brazil's Superior Court of Justice (STJ) deciding three related cases and the Supreme Court (STF) preparing to rule on the matter. The European understanding is outlined: information falls within the RTBF scope when it was never of public interest or has lost its relevance, timeliness, and accuracy over time.
Ruiz emphasizes that discussions often fall into unhelpful "all or nothing" extremes and that Powles's contributions are valuable for moving beyond this binary thinking. The introduction stresses that the right is intended for "ordinary people," not public figures or matters of genuine public interest, and that it's not truly about "forgetting" but rather about preventing irrelevant information from perpetually defining how someone is perceived. Concerns are raised about aspects of indexation and de-indexation that haven't been adequately discussed, particularly relevant in countries like Brazil where civil society groups prioritize public transparency.
Interpretation: The introduction effectively frames the interview as a crucial contribution to Brazilian debates precisely when the country's highest courts are grappling with these issues. By acknowledging the tendency toward polarized thinking—either complete remembering or total forgetting—Ruiz prepares readers for Powles's more nuanced approach. The emphasis on context-specific application is particularly important for Brazil, where historical experiences with dictatorship and ongoing struggles for governmental transparency create a unique backdrop for considering privacy rights. The introduction successfully positions the RTBF not as a threat to transparency or memory, but as a tool requiring careful analysis and implementation that respects both individual dignity and legitimate public interests.
Summary: This section begins with InternetLab referencing Powles's statement about America potentially regretting its condemnation of European data protection rights. The question addresses a recent study by researchers including Virgilio Almeida, which found that people making de-indexation requests could be re-identified, supposedly undermining the spirit of the CJEU decision. Powles responds by critiquing the study's methodology, noting it examined only 283 URLs out of 1.46 million requests (0.017%), drawn from a biased sample compiled from lists published by British news organizations that are antagonistic to the RTBF ruling.
Powles explains that British media organizations have animosity toward the ruling for two reasons: as part of the "Fourth Estate," they're concerned about maintaining public records; and they feel disempowered by Google's implementation process, which doesn't engage publishers meaningfully. She describes how Google makes decisions and only sends URL notifications to publishers without explanation. Initial media outrage subsided when journalists like James Ball and Robert Peston realized that requests often came not from story subjects but from incidental commenters. Powles argues that re-identification was trivially easy and should have been 100% successful, and that the real purpose of the right is to allow people to move on from their past. She emphasizes this right is for ordinary people, not public figures, and uses the example of someone associated with a rape but completely innocent, whose search results continue to harm him professionally.
Interpretation: This section reveals critical flaws in how the RTBF debate has been framed, particularly through Google's selective transparency and media organizations' reactive stance. Powles's methodological critique of the re-identification study demonstrates how research can inadvertently perpetuate misunderstandings when working with biased data sets. Her emphasis on viewing these requests through a human lens—focusing on actual people's lives rather than abstract principles—is a powerful reframing that challenges both libertarian concerns about censorship and utilitarian arguments about information access. The distinction she draws between "remembering" and "constantly recalling" is philosophically sophisticated, suggesting that the right to be forgotten is better understood as a right to contextual obscurity rather than historical erasure. This framing could help bridge divides between those concerned about memory preservation and those advocating for individual dignity and rehabilitation.
Summary: InternetLab asks about the main outcomes and conflicts from implementing the Costeja decision, questioning whether Google's interpretation represents the most appropriate way to handle de-indexation requests. Powles responds that over 500,000 Europeans have made requests through Google's form created one month after the ruling, showing Google moved swiftly. She notes broader consequences regarding the application of 20-year-old laws to companies like Google, which had previously operated relatively freely in the data protection ecosystem. Google's rapid implementation may have been intended to prevent deeper examination of what it means to be designated a data controller with various obligations.
Powles criticizes Google's limited and potentially misleading public information, particularly the company's initial emphasis on criminals and public figures making requests. Working with data scientist Sylvia Tippmann, Powles discovered through an error in Google's own transparency report that less than 5% of requests came from these controversial categories, while the company had given them prominence. This skewed public perception, though understandably people would oppose removal of genuinely newsworthy information. Most requests actually come from ordinary people without public profiles who are "victims of algorithmic failure." Powles advocates for more segmented, nuanced approaches—such as moving results lower in search rankings rather than complete removal, or pseudonymizing names after certain periods. She notes Google has already done this for revenge porn, announcing global de-listing after eight months.
Interpretation: This section exposes a pattern of strategic framing by Google that shaped public discourse around the RTBF in ways that may have served the company's interests rather than promoting understanding. By highlighting extreme cases of politicians and criminals making requests, Google arguably created a straw man that distracted from the legitimate needs of ordinary citizens seeking to escape the "perpetual present" of past mistakes or associations. Powles's discovery of the discrepancy between Google's public examples and actual request categories is significant journalism that challenges corporate narratives about digital rights. Her proposal for segmented approaches based on the nature of information demonstrates sophisticated thinking about proportionality—not all information requiring de-indexation needs the same response. The revelation that revenge porn received more decisive action than other categories raises questions about what criteria determine when Google acts more protectively, and whether those criteria align with actual harms experienced by individuals.
Summary: InternetLab raises questions about Google's evolving approach to territorial scope—initially limiting de-indexation to national domains (like google.de), then expanding to geo-located IPs, and now disputing with French authorities about worldwide de-indexation. The question notes Google's different approaches to jurisdiction for intimate images versus copyrighted content, and asks about the appropriateness of placing decision-making responsibility on platforms like Google. Powles distinguishes between territoriality questions and private decision-making, noting that Google's "territorial" solutions don't necessarily correspond to legal borders, making this a "lightning rod debate" for broader concerns about compliance with legitimate laws versus potential abuses.
Powles personally supports geo-localized solutions for many issues but argues for making the discussion "human" rather than abstract, asking whether someone affected by revenge porn or medical information truly requires only local protection—the answer being no, some rights should be effective globally. She references research by Van Alsenoy and Koekkoek grounded in public international law for navigating this complexity. While understanding the French data protection authority's position that Google shouldn't unilaterally determine territoriality, Powles notes that authorities lack knowledge about what these cases actually involve, making it difficult to mandate global delisting without that information. She criticizes Google for claiming not to have granular data despite being the "world's organizer of information," and notes the contradiction of Google claiming it shouldn't be the decision-maker while implementing processes entirely opaquely without engaging independent authorities.
Interpretation: This section illuminates the complex power dynamics when private corporations become de facto arbiters of speech and privacy rights across jurisdictions. The territorial question isn't merely technical but reflects deeper tensions about sovereignty, corporate power, and the architecture of global information flows. Powles's call to "make it human" is again a powerful reframing that cuts through abstract legal debates to focus on actual impacts on individuals' lives. Her observation that different types of information merit different territorial approaches—global protection for some harms, local for others—suggests a more sophisticated framework than blanket rules. The critique of Google's opacity while simultaneously protesting its decision-making role exposes a fundamental contradiction: the company has enormous power and detailed data but refuses to share information that would enable democratic oversight or informed policy-making. This raises profound questions about accountability in platform governance and whether private companies can legitimately exercise quasi-judicial functions without transparency mechanisms that would be required of public institutions.
Summary: InternetLab describes two Brazilian cases before the Supreme Court involving requests to television stations not to broadcast specials about famous crimes from over 20 years ago. In one case, a victim's family claimed re-exposure was baseless and no longer relevant; in another, an acquitted defendant argued re-exposure caused unjustified harm. The question draws parallels to criminal justice rehabilitation principles and asks whether there's a difference between online and offline "forgetting" claims. Powles explains that civilian law countries have developed droit à l'oubli (right to oblivion) from personality rights like dignity and intimacy, which have separate legal origins from the Costeja case's data protection basis.
While both could theoretically apply equally to offline and online domains, there's a distinction in the extensiveness of data erasure. Online search engine requests specifically introduce "obfuscation and obscurity" while information remains in the public record—the issue is continued prominence. The requests Powles discusses concern preventing new presence in original sources, not search indexing. She predicts the acquitted defendant in the Candelária massacre case will likely succeed at the Supreme Court because the story didn't need him and he had legal rights not to be mentioned after acquittal. The Aida Curi case, involving a murder victim's family not wanting the crime revisited, will likely be rejected, being similar to cases in other jurisdictions. Powles notes mechanisms like robots.txt can prevent indexing without removal.
Interpretation: This section reveals important distinctions between different manifestations of "forgetting" rights with varied legal foundations and appropriate remedies. The Brazilian cases illustrate how offline media contexts present different considerations than search engine indexing—a television special creates a distinct form of re-victimization through active republication rather than passive maintenance of existing archives. Powles's prediction about the different outcomes for the two cases reflects a principled distinction: the acquitted individual has a clear legal right to rehabilitation, while the victim's family, despite understandable pain, faces a higher bar when the crime itself remains historically significant. The discussion highlights a tension inherent in these rights: when does legitimate historical documentation become harmful dwelling on past trauma? The answer appears to turn on whether the specific individual's involvement remains publicly relevant—an acquitted bystander has stronger claims than participants in historically significant events. This framework protects individual rehabilitation while preserving collective memory of important social events.
Summary: InternetLab raises concerns specific to Latin America's recent history, noting that the last decade has seen heated discussions about restoring memory of dictatorships, censorship, torture, and executions. Many victims and families seek recognition, but some legal scholars worry about conflicts with amnesty laws that covered both state violators and outlawed political organizations. The question asks whether the European RTBF decision, if "exported," would run against memory-restoration movements, creating tension between access to information, free expression, transparency, and the right to be forgotten. Powles responds that while memory is "the foundation of humanity," she would separate memory from what's specifically on Google when discussing search engine contexts.
She emphasizes the importance of local ownership of these debates in Brazil and Argentina, considering particularities of legal machinery, tools, and especially the "public interest defense" that serves as a core lever in RTBF. For people granted amnesty, continued public interest exists in their stories, and legal restrictions on what can happen to them don't stop investigation or rigorous journalism. She sees no conflict between data protection/delisting rights and memory preservation. However, she acknowledges that depending on the strength of legal systems and their implementation, misuse is possible, which is why strong safeguards and transparency about how rights are applied are essential for protecting against potential abuses.
Interpretation: This section addresses perhaps the most profound objection to RTBF in post-authoritarian contexts: the fear that individual privacy rights could be weaponized against collective historical reckoning. Powles's response is reassuring but perhaps somewhat optimistic about the robustness of public interest defenses in contexts where legal institutions may be weaker or more subject to political pressure than in Western Europe. The distinction between Google's index and public memory is important but may underestimate how central search engines have become to collective memory formation in digital societies—for many people, especially younger generations, Google effectively mediates access to historical knowledge. Her call for strong safeguards and transparency is crucial but somewhat vague on specifics, which may be necessary given varied national contexts but could also leave room for implementations that fail to protect memory projects adequately. The underlying tension—between individuals' rights to move on from past associations and societies' needs to remember traumatic histories—may be more difficult to resolve than Powles suggests, particularly when powerful political or economic actors have interests in obscuring their roles in historical injustices.
Summary: InternetLab presents research showing Brazilian courts have been highly protective of reputational rights at the expense of free expression, with politicians representing one-third of plaintiffs in cases involving online humor and courts condemning users to pay damages in 50% of cases. Numerous bills in Congress use broad language like "outdated" or "irrelevant" information based on personality rights, potentially opening the floodgates for politicians seeking to remove content that might harm them in future elections. Given this judicial stance, what should legislators keep in mind when implementing RTBF? Powles first reiterates that under her conception of RTBF, politicians "are not even in the running" because public interest exists in their political activities, with only truly private life components potentially protected.
She finds it interesting that scholars from contexts where personality rights are foreign (UK, Australia, Canada, USA) don't understand existing traditions and worry about drift and overreach. Some current bills are "far too broadly drafted," raising legitimate concerns. She argues for shifting focus back to the core domain—the 500,000-plus ordinary Europeans making requests as "victims of algorithmic failure" seeking meaningful data protection rights and control over building blocks of their lives that, when wrongly used, can affect them for a long time. She calls on digital activists and academics to clarify the core of this right, suggesting distinct legislation may not actually be necessary. She notes that 152,000 positive freedom of expression cases in Europe based on Google litigation should reassure anyone concerned about politicians suing ordinary Internet users.
Interpretation: This final substantive section confronts the real risk of RTBF implementation in contexts with different legal cultures and weaker institutional protections for expression. Powles's concern about "far too broadly drafted" bills is well-founded, particularly given the empirical evidence InternetLab presents about Brazilian courts' deference to powerful plaintiffs. The gap between theory—that RTBF should exclude public figures and matters of public interest—and practice—that politicians could exploit vague language and sympathetic courts—represents a genuine implementation challenge. Powles's faith that European litigation outcomes will reassure critics may be misplaced in contexts where judicial independence and press freedom are less robust. Her call to "bring back humanity into the debate" and focus on ordinary people's needs is compelling but perhaps insufficient given the political economy of litigation, where well-resourced actors can pursue cases that poorer individuals cannot. The fundamental problem may be that any right, however carefully designed for vulnerable individuals, can be appropriated by powerful actors in systems with insufficient safeguards, suggesting that procedural protections and institutional designs may matter as much as substantive definitions of the right itself.
Summary: A brief notice directs readers to Powles's more detailed elaboration of her perspective in "'The case that won't be forgotten'" published in the Loyola University of Chicago Law Journal in 2015. The document concludes with blank pages, marking the end of the interview content.
Interpretation: The reference to Powles's academic article indicates that this interview, while comprehensive, represents a more accessible entry point to her thinking, with deeper theoretical and legal analysis available in scholarly publications. This multilayered approach to knowledge dissemination—combining accessible interviews for general audiences with technical scholarship for specialists—reflects best practices in public interest research, making important ideas available to diverse constituencies including policymakers, journalists, civil society advocates, and academics who may approach these issues from different perspectives and with different needs.
This interview represents a significant contribution to the global and specifically Brazilian discourse on the right to be forgotten, offering nuanced analysis that avoids the polarized extremes characterizing much public debate. Several key themes emerge that merit emphasis:
Reframing the Debate: Powles consistently works to reframe RTBF away from abstract concerns about censorship or information access toward the concrete human experiences of ordinary people whose lives are disproportionately affected by algorithmic prominence of past information. This reframing—from "forgetting" to "moving on," from "censorship" to "contextual obscurity," from "border disputes" to "human needs"—represents sophisticated rhetorical work that could help build broader coalitions supporting nuanced implementation.
Critique of Corporate Power: A running thread throughout the interview is Powles's measured but firm critique of Google's approach to implementing RTBF. Her identification of misleading public communications, strategic opacity about request patterns, and the contradiction between protesting decision-making authority while exercising it without transparency or independent oversight reveals important power dynamics in platform governance. This analysis has implications far beyond RTBF for understanding how major technology companies shape public policy discourse to serve their institutional interests.
Context Matters: Powles repeatedly emphasizes that implementation must be locally owned and contextually appropriate, considering each jurisdiction's legal traditions, institutional strengths, historical experiences, and social priorities. This respect for local context while maintaining universal principles—such as public interest defenses and protection for ordinary citizens—models how global digital rights frameworks might be adapted across diverse settings without either rigid universalism or complete relativism.
Transparency and Safeguards: Throughout the interview, Powles identifies lack of transparency as a central problem—in Google's processes, in public understanding of who makes requests and why, in how decisions are reached. Her consistent call for transparency, segmentation of different types of cases, and strong safeguards reflects understanding that implementation mechanisms matter as much as substantive definitions. Rights that look protective on paper can become oppressive in practice without procedural protections and institutional accountability.
Unresolved Tensions: Despite Powles's thoughtful analysis, certain tensions remain inadequately resolved. The conflict between individual rehabilitation and collective memory in post-authoritarian contexts receives somewhat superficial treatment given its complexity. The problem of powerful actors exploiting rights designed for vulnerable individuals—evident in Brazilian courts' patterns—receives acknowledgment but limited concrete solution beyond appeals to public interest defenses that may prove weak in practice. The question of whether private companies can legitimately exercise quasi-judicial functions, even with transparency improvements, remains fundamentally unresolved.
For Brazilian readers and policymakers, this interview offers both opportunities and warnings. The opportunity lies in learning from European implementation experiences to design more sophisticated, segmented approaches that protect ordinary citizens' dignity without enabling powerful actors to suppress legitimate public interest information. The warning concerns the risks of importing frameworks designed for contexts with stronger institutional protections into environments where courts may be more deferential to elites and where recent authoritarian history makes transparency and memory particularly precious. The interview ultimately suggests that getting RTBF right requires not just good substantive law but robust institutions, genuine transparency, empirical monitoring, and constant vigilance against capture by those seeking to evade accountability rather than rebuild their lives.
The timing of this interview—conducted in 2016 as Brazil's highest courts prepared to rule on RTBF cases—gave it particular salience for ongoing policy debates. Powles's insights about the need for segmented approaches, her critique of Google's opacity, and her emphasis on protecting ordinary people rather than powerful actors offered valuable guidance for judges, legislators, and civil society advocates grappling with these issues. Whether Brazilian institutions ultimately heeded these lessons remains an important question for empirical evaluation of how RTBF has developed in practice since this conversation took place.